Word: malaya
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...everywhere, the Japanese made a spectacular beginning in Malaya. Their plan was shrewdly devised and fanatically attempted. It was defined by nature as much...
East Side, West Side. Malaya (see map p. 20) is divided by a great watershed. To the east is an inhospitable land. Its beaches are broad, but they lie behind treacherous offshore ledges, riparian sandbars and extended shallows, which soon will be pounded by the terrible surf of the northeasterly monsoon. Behind the beaches, beyond a fringe of graceful, feathery casuarina trees, lie the swamps-great stinking pestholes which house most of nature's nightmares: crocodiles, pythons, cobras, and the nasty little Anopheles, the mosquito of malaria. Behind the swamps lie jungles which are almost airtight, home of adders...
There are two seasons in Malaya: the wet season and the wetter season. The latter, which is about to begin, makes the east side of Malaya an unbearable windswept sponge land. Landings off the coast in support of beachheads would be all but impossible. The only two motor roads on the east side are often broken by floods...
...attack on Malaya from the East, the natural approach for the Japanese, was bound to be extremely hazardous, especially because the British expected it. The only possible strategy would be somehow to get at and on the west coast...
East Try, West Try. First they attacked Malaya's east coast. This attack had just two foci and two aims. Beachheads were established at Kota Bahru, in the extreme northeast, and at Kuantan, about 200 miles north of Singapore. These two places are the keys to east coast transportation, Kota Bahru being the only rail-sea junction along the whole coast, Kuantan the only highway-sea junction, except in the extreme south...